The opposite of cricket, of course, where using the same ball for hours and constantly shining one side more than the other is critical to achieving swing, and the decision of when to take a new ball is a key part of the match strategy.
posted by Shark Hat at 12:10 PM on September 25 [7 favorites]

Fun story, thanks!

I've read a lot about baseball history and in one of the books, they described how in the early days, some teams' owners would send employees into the stands to retrieve foul balls -- and often, fistfights would break out when the fans declined to give up the ball. Can't imagine that happening today, no sir.
posted by martin q blank at 1:20 PM on September 25 [2 favorites]

Read Ron Luciano's "Remembrance of Swings Past" for some hilarious commentary about how, back when the owners were cheap, they used to go too far in the other direction and they would sometimes use three balls per game, and sometimes the same balls from the day before, which also had spit and tobacco juice on them. At some point a player wanted to replace a ball that "had the consistency of an overripe peach but couldn't be hit as far." But the umpire wouldn't do it, so the player got rid of it by throwing it into the stands.
posted by Melismata at 1:24 PM on September 25 [2 favorites]

I loosely pay attention to this during games because when I was a kid I had a subscription to 3, 2, 1 Contact magazine, which had a couple pages of "Factoids" near the start of every issue. One that I remember stated that the average life of a professional baseball is 5 pitches, but that was from the early 80s; when I'm watching games now it's felt like there's no way a ball is lasting 5 pitches, so it's reassuring to see that the actual figure is about half that.
posted by LionIndex at 1:29 PM on September 25 [1 favorite]

There are so many things you could do to those balls.

As I understand it, the home team supplies the balls, and even without modifying them in any overt way, you could easily set up a bounce protocol to sort them into dead, medium and live categories, and use the dead ones for teams with better hitting than yours, the live ones where you had the advantage in hitting, and the medium otherwise.

Unless there's a preventive measure built in, I¡¯d tend to assume some teams are already doing that.
posted by jamjam at 2:28 PM on September 25 [2 favorites]

I thought there was a "scandal" a decade or two ago where one team (I want to say it was the Rockies, which if you look at their year this year should certainly start doing it again) was storing the "opposing team's" balls in the freezer or some such to deaden them?
posted by maxwelton at 2:54 PM on September 25 [2 favorites]

Unless there's a preventive measure built in,

There is. Part of the umpires' pre-game duties is to unbox the new balls and rub them down with the mud that chavenet refers to in the previously. Though I hear they usually pay someone else to do it.
posted by donpardo at 3:02 PM on September 25 [1 favorite]

But also, the balls are put into play by the umpire. Amazingly, major league umpires aren't just some dudes they found on the street who have never touched a baseball before, so they'd have some idea whether what they're putting into play is a new ball or not.
posted by LionIndex at 3:21 PM on September 25 [2 favorites]

Maybe if they didn't hit them into the stands so often, they wouldn't have to use quite so many.

In fact, I believe Pittsburgh is currently experimenting with this very strategy.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 3:41 PM on September 25 [11 favorites]

I am certain the home run derby games are solely to get rid of the B-grade baseball stock.
posted by Jessica Savitch's Coke Spoon at 4:03 PM on September 25 [1 favorite]

What an incredibly wasteful process! 192 balls for each game is approaching performance art.
posted by dg at 4:20 PM on September 25 [4 favorites]

I think it was Jim Bouton who wrote about Yogi Berra sharpening his belt buckle, so that he could send a scuffed ball back to Whitey Ford at intervals and Whitey could make it sing three arias from Carmen.
posted by delfin at 6:09 PM on September 25 [4 favorites]

What an incredibly wasteful process! 192 balls for each game is approaching performance art.

Well, they don't fire them into the sun after 2.5 pitches, they just sell them or use them for practice.
posted by axiom at 9:05 PM on September 25 [1 favorite]

It would be pretty cool if they did, though.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 9:20 PM on September 25 [2 favorites]

axiom: "Well, they don't fire them into the sun after 2.5 pitches, they just sell them or use them for practice."

No, but they still use all the resources and energy needed to create 192 balls when surely, surely they could get away with many orders of magnitude less without affecting the game in the slightest.
posted by dg at 11:24 PM on September 25 [1 favorite]

As a long-time baseball fan, I felt I should share that the main reason so many new balls get put into play is the pitchers.

Baseball has really cracked down on pitchers applying substances other than the provided rosin to baseballs ¡ª they used to use all sorts of substances to get a better grip. So, they want as clean a ball as possible.

Pitchers are also hypersensitive to the seams on the baseball ¡ª they grip those to put the incredible spin rates that allow the pitches to move so much on delivery to home plate.

MLB bought Rawlings (who makes the baseballs) less than 10 years ago and have been screwing around with the ball ever since. Pitchers spent two years complaining about inconsistent seams and MLB also got caught using different baseballs during the playoffs. They substituted in ones that did not travel as far in some stupid effort to have less runs scored because they think it would make more people watch or something.

No pro sports league in North America hates the players more than MLB hates their.
posted by grmpyprogrammer at 4:30 AM on September 26 [3 favorites]

They substituted in ones that did not travel as far in some stupid effort to have less runs scored because they think it would make more people watch or something.

This seems odd to me. Is it because they think fewer runs scored means the games will be closer and therefore people won't turn it off? One might argue that cutting down on the one thing that -- (a) determines the outcome of the game and (b) doesn't happen all that many times -- might encourage viewer boredom.
posted by axiom at 12:20 PM on September 26 [1 favorite]

I did not know that MLB insourced ball production. That's fascinating.
posted by rockindata at 12:41 PM on September 26 [1 favorite]

Some years ago I was listening to a quiz show on NPR and there was a question about how many baseballs were used in a major league game. I started thinking about how many are fouled off into the stands and based on that as a major reason for using balls, came up with an estimate of 90-100, which at the time was pretty close to the correct answer. With umpires being meticulous about using clean balls and pitchers being particular about getting a ball with good seams, I can see it easily being close to 200/balls/game. I wonder how much each ball costs to make? I am guessing they make enough profit on the ones they sell to cover the cost of the ones that go into the stands.
posted by TedW at 3:02 AM on September 27 [1 favorite]

grmpyprogrammer: "As a long-time baseball fan, I felt I should share that the main reason so many new balls get put into play is the pitchers."
But a cricket test, lasting several days of play, uses 14-15 balls. Second-hand balls at that - test cricket only uses balls that have been previously used in first-class matches.

A team can request the ball be changed, but only after it has been used for 80 overs (that's 480 bowls). Balls that are replaced may go back in the 'ball library' as long as they meet the size requirement, meaning they must pass through exactly one of two templates - passing through both means the ball is too small, not passing through either means it's too big.
posted by dg at 3:39 PM on September 28 [1 favorite]

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